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Rovio has been milking the Angry Birds franchise and creating new IPs on its own for quite some time, but now the biggest developer in mobile wants to graduate to becoming a third party publisher. Meet Rovio Stars, a program for developers who want help with getting their games in tip-top shape and ready to publish on the mobile marketplaces of the world.
With Rovio Stars, Rovio is promising developers a nice safety net and guidance from the Rovio team in polishing up games, advancing ideas, and seeing a game through to the finish line. Developers can submit their games to Rovio for consideration, though there are some restrictions. For starters, Rovio will want your game to be significantly developed, meaning your application will probably make its way into the trash if all you have are sketches or even a prototype.
We’re not sure what Rovio’s end game is just yet, but we imagine they will want a piece of the pie of whatever games they help publish. Rovio’s name alone can help a game reach a million or more downloads (provided it’s free), and with Rovio promising to put its world-class marketing and PR team to work, as well as the aforementioned guidance you’ll get from Rovio in finishing the game itself, we assume that won’t come without a price tag.
Of course, the details of the program won’t give us much indication on what kind of terms developers can expect. Each situation will likely be different, and these terms are often kept under wraps in the gaming industry.
That said, it’s up to developers to decide whether or not they want to take the chance and see if Rovio is willing to accept them into the growing family. The biggest factor for developers decide is figuring out the 1% of X vs 100% of Y equation, and seeing if it’s worth potentially signing away a sizable chunk of royalties away for the potential of bigger sales down the line. If you’ve pondered all that and decide you want to take the plunge, head to Rovio’s new developers’ form to get started.
Rovio started high and has only gone downhill. Aside from the boring repetitiveness of Angry Birds, anytime you open one of their games it just bombards you with ads for their other games, all the time.
Now they want to slap their name (and further ad pushing) on anybody else’s game.
Dan
if they will add rovio style ads, count me out
I guess Rovio really is a one trick pony, so much so they need to borrow other people’s ponies.
They’ve been making and improving their fun games for years. And millions around the world still love them. Not only that, they have toys, food, back packs, board game and a theme park all under the Angry Birds name, I’d hardly call that a one trick pony. This is business at it’s best.